John Wick and Baba Yaga

One of the most popular pieces of modern cinema media and pop culture media is the film, John Wick. Some of the characters that are the antagonists of the film, who are Russians, label the main character, named John Wick, as the Baba Yaga. However, with the knowledge that we now have on Baba Yaga, it doesn't seem to fit John Wick too well. When looking into alternate reasons for this potential misunderstanding by the movie creators, there are many articles that are non-scholarly sources diving into this. Some examples are "The Reason Why John Wick is Called Baba Yaga", "How John Wick got Baba Yaga completely wrong", and "What Does Baba Yaga in John Wick Mean?".

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Alternate Reasons of John Wick's "Baba Yaga" label

The Russians refer to John Wick as Baba Yaga. Context on John Wick as a character can be shown in the clip from the movie as well. A brief breakdown of Wick is that he is a trained killer that was pushed to his limits despite being retired from the field. The biggest difference that is pointed out between Wick and Baba Yaga is that Baba Yaga is usually classified as an old female monster, typically an old witch who lures children. Wick is a male assassin who will go after whoever is necessary to complete his task or to seek his revenge.

An alternate reason for the "mislabel" is that the Russian word for "boogeyman" is written as "babay", "babai", or "babayka", which all sound pretty similar to Baba Yaga. I found out about those terms from the articles "The Reason Why John Wick is Called Baba Yaga", "How John Wick got Baba Yaga completely wrong", and "What Does Baba Yaga in John Wick Mean?". This was also confirmed in a Wikipedia search of the term Babay (Slavic Folklore) However, since the folklore of Baba Yaga is more well-known in Russian and Slavic folklore that may have been a large reason for its placement in the film.

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There are also similarities that can be found between Baba Yaga and John Wick as characters. Baba Yaga has been seen in some stories to help people despite her reputation, which John Wick does as well even though he is known as a murderous assassin (Zarka, 2021). Baba Yaga also has been known as a scary tale that parents would tell their children where the Baba Yaga will come to get them (Shaw, 2021), which is what can also be seen in the clip above.

Pop Culture Media Influence: Text

Despite the differences that are pointed out in the non-scholarly articles and the potential similarities that can be made to connect the characters of Baba Yaga and John Wick, this is a great example of intertextuality and genre. Genre with intertextuality is described as "...each genre will be distinguished in terms of thematic or referential capacities, as a routinized vehicle for encoding and expressing particular orders of knowledge and experience" (Bauman, 2004, 1-11). The knowledge of Baba Yaga folklore in itself has its own genre in a sense since there are so many variations of how the folklore can be told; it also ties to how John Wick then uses that previous knowledge to create its own lore in pop culture media.

Pop Culture Media Influence: Text